"...complex problems are inherently entangled with both human and more-than-human worlds and demand design practices that embrace the interconnectedness of life."
Extracurricular
work
Symbiosis
DESIGN
RESEARCH
PROJECT
An Investigation of Our Future
Relationship with Teachable Artificial Intelligence Assistants for Dementia Provoked by A Shift of The Self
DESIGN
PROJECT
Exploring How to Design
Interactions Building on the Works
of Dewey, Oyama, and van Dijk
DESIGN
PROJECT
Designing a Speculative Product
to Debate the Future of Powdered
Food Preparation and Consumption
DESIGN
RESEARCH
PROJECT
Breaking the Cycle of Needs
through Manipulation Cards
in a Participatory Design Study
PHILOSOPHY
CERTIFICATE
COURSES
Philosophical perspectives
on technology and innovation
DESIGN
RESEARCH
PROJECT
Exploring Expressive Ambiguity
through a Material-Oriented
Design Approach
DESIGN
RESEARCH
PROJECT
Exploring the Minor Key in both
the
Design Process and Design
within a More-than-human Context
ACADEMIC
EXCHANGE
User Experience &
Mātauranga Design
FINAL
MASTER
PROJECT
Exploring the Worlds of
Socio-ecological Innovation
Navigated by Design Philosophy Correspondence
IDENTITY
During my master’s program I developed a critical perspective on design and society, focusing on speculative and critical design to explore the role of technology and design in shaping our world.
I designed scenario’s, experienceable speculative artifacts with emerging technologies, and facilitated discussions and workshops. This shaped my identity as a reflective designer who questions not only where we want to go as a society but also the responsibilities of design in facilitating that direction.
This further developed through engaging with philosophy, ethics, and history that deepened my responsibility and understanding of the transformational capability of design within society. These theories and inspirations fuel my creativity, where I use multiple creative method to find connections with contemporary design, design theory, technology, art, the sciences, and philosophies. However, my passion for learning and self-reflection sometimes holds me too long in the conceptual phase. I am addressing this by involving collaborators earlier in the process and setting clear deadlines.
Influenced by thinkers like Tim Ingold, I embraced the idea of design and the design process as ongoing processes that become over time. This open attitude makes me a holistic design researcher knowledgeable of many methods and approaches but not specialized in a specific area of design. However, I can pick an appropriate set to anticipate towards a particular question, idea, or challenge.
This makes me a resilient and adaptable designer. I work well in a team where I can take on many tasks and give feedback on the process and methods, while also keeping the narrative of the project on track. I sometimes place too much pressure on myself to learn and accomplish things independently, but I am learning to manage this by actively collaborating with others.
My identity broadened through speculatively exploring both the design as well as the design process as active actors, going beyond human-centred design. Posthuman thinking became an active part of my identity through including the more-than-human in designs, a focus on ecology, and a gained understanding on indigenous worldviews during an exchange in New Zealand.
Currently, I am a design researcher driven by exploring what design and a designer are, and what they could become. I do this through traversing the unknown, diving deep into multidisciplinary theory and philosophy to uncover and discover how design can support the creation of more socially and ecologically sustainable worlds.
VISION
I see design as both a reflection of and a response to the evolving world where design has been deeply embedded in capitalistic and human-centred practices, prioritizing products and services to meet, often false, human needs [4,7].
Throughout my academic journey I personally found myself resonating against these trends. Inspired by Dunne and Raby I saw design as a tool to be critical, open-up thinking, and facilitate debate on the practices around novel technologies in our society, rather than to perpetuate unsustainable ones [1,5]. Design should be used to reflect on the fast-changing technological world around us, in order to slow down and create time to collectively think things through.
Furthermore, my anxiety towards loss of biodiversity, my reconnection with nature during the pandemic, following philosophy courses, and getting introduced to posthuman thinkers such as Donna Haraway led me to the vision that design should not only be human-centred, but should also actively include the natural world around us. An exchange to New Zealand with its protected native biodiversity and interwoven indigenous culture further developed my posthuman vision on design.
These developments contributed towards seeing design as an idealistic bridge between fostering ecological and societal sustainability. I take an attitude on this through understanding that there is not one solution to this complex problem. Inspired by the work on metamodern sensibility I see the intention of design as inherently not to solve, it is rather the delight in the attempt to solve in spite of its unsolvableness [6]. This shows a shift in sensibility and responsibility through the attitude that a design is open-ended and is constructed to find new paths and transform along the way to stay with the trouble, following the work of Tim Ingold and Donna Haraway [2,3].
To realize this vision, we could ground design practice in philosophy, encouraging critical reflection on the tools we employ and the worlds we aim to create. Design can facilitate the empowering and pollinating of the expertise within a group of multidisciplinary people, supporting the creation of new situated knowledge(s).
Methods such as speculative interventions can afford to artistically and critically mediate between humans and the world while opening up curiosity, critical thinking, and self-reflection about a complex idea, topic, or issue at hand. This enables designers, users, and other stakeholders to collaboratively take meaningful steps toward the horizon of a more just and sustainable future.
- Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. 2024. Speculative everything: design, fiction, and social dreaming. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachussetts.
- Donna Jeanne Haraway. 2016. Staying with the trouble: making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press, Durham.
- Tim Ingold. 2013. Making: anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. Routledge, London ; New York.
- Herbert Marcuse. 2021. The New Forms of Control. In Power and Inequality (2nd ed.), Levon Chorbajian (ed.). Routledge, 33–37. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315201511-6
- Elizabeth Shove. 2003. Users, Technologies and Expectations of Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research 16, 2: 193–206.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13511610304521 - Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin Van Den Akker. 2010. Notes on metamodernism. Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 2, 1: 5677. https://doi.org/10.3402/jac.v2i0.5677
- Matthew Wizinsky. 2022. Design after capitalism: transforming design today for an equitable tomorrow. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.